Speed Dating - The New Masochism?

On Tuesday night I did something I’ve never done before. And yesterday I went speed dating. OK, it’s an old ‘Round the Horne’ joke, but it serves as an intro. If anybody is still following my writings, and there’s no particular reason why they should, they might be surprised that I went to a straight speed dating event, but at heart I’m a hetero-romantic whatever my naughty bits might think. It wasn’t exactly a spur-of-the-moment thing as I’ve been toying with the idea for a few months now, but I was just fiddling about on the Internet one night as one does and put "speed dating Leeds" into a search engine, found somebody who was doing an event in Leeds fairly soon and booked it. My total understanding of the concept was based on having seen it done in an episode of ‘Sex and the City’ (nothing if not educational, that programme), but it just seemed like an opportunity to meet unattached young ladies - which can be the hardest part.

And so it was that I turned up at a Cuban theme bar underneath one of the railway viaducts in Leeds city centre at about 7.15 last night. I didn’t feel particularly awkward or embarrassed on the way there and was reassured when I found the bar, with "closed for private function" signs up, and having registered and been supplied with a badge showing my name and number (why am I always Number 6?) I bought one of those fancy Mexican beers which come with a lime in the neck of the bottle and waited to start. In the course of the first half hour, I was paired with a stressed primary school teacher, a couple of hippie chicks, a computer programmer, three trainee tax advisors, a librarian and a few others who seem to have made no impression at all. It doesn’t help when girls have such neutral middle-class names- there’s a Rachel, a Kate and an Alison who I can’t put faces to at all. And in the second half, I met a couple of community nurses, one of whom has the distinct advantage of resembling Christina Aguilera, a trainee science teacher with far too much hair for somebody who works with Bunsen burners, a multimedia student and three girls from Sheffield. Sheffield Girl 3 was without doubt the nadir of the evening- after we’d got the "and what do you do?" questions out of the way, she started asking me why I was doing a job I didn’t enjoy and exhorting me to do something I liked instead. Pushy isn’t the word- in fact, she put the mockers on any chance her friends might have had with me, because there’s no way I want to start seeing somebody in the knowledge that I can’t stand one of her friends.

The overall effect was like having 22 very short job interviews and never really having the chance to get into my stride. I’m not sure whether I make a good first impression or not- I try so hard to be unobjectionable and neutral that my personality doesn’t really come out in a short conversation. Like Stilton and fine malt whisky, I’m an acquired taste and you need to know me for a while to appreciate what I have to offer. It probably didn’t help that the two main things I ended up talking about were my impending redundancy and my trip to Australia, thus (correctly) giving the impression of being unemployed and not necessarily being around for more than a couple of weeks in any case. Probably about half the girls there I wouldn’t mind seeing again; of the ones who’ve posted their results with the organisers, none feel the same about me. It’s only after the event that the butterflies set in- having met someone, you have a fair idea of whether you want to see them again and you can put their rejection or acceptance to a face. Being rejected by a computer or a faceless profile is one thing, but when you can put it down to a person you chatted to for a few minutes and seemed to get on with, it’s personal. It’s a long time since I had to handle the emotional intensity of going out with somebody, and I’m not sure I do it well- there’s part of me which just wants to run a mile from the whole situation. Perhaps I’m just not cut out for emotional entanglements and should enjoy the serenity of not having to take somebody else into account all the time. But I’ll follow it all through and may even try it again when I come back from Australia and New Zealand and have a bit more confidence.

On the other hand, if I hadn’t gone to that bar, I wouldn’t have discovered that Christopher Eccleston is currently appearing at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. I’ve already booked.